THE BLIZZARD

Now that he was nearing God's Voice, it was necessary that he should travel more cautiously and keep a sharp lookout ahead. At any moment he might come in sight of a Company's trapper, either sitting beneath the trees by his camp-fire or racing down-river between the tall banks, following his sled. He might be recognised, and recognition would lead to his arrest. Whatever happened afterwards, he desired his freedom for yet a little while, so he went carefully. In the course of the night he passed by one wigwam; but the Indian was evidently away, for no dog rose up to herald his approach. If the squaw was there, she did not rouse; he got by unnoticed.

Hoping against hope, he argued with himself, trying to believe that Spurling was alive. He told himself that this had been a vision sent to him from God to turn him aside from his crime. He had gazed upon himself as he would have become, and his soul had revolted at the sight.

As he ran on, swearing at his huskies, urging them forward with the lash, he offered up to God many fervid thanks for the mercy which He had shown him, hoping that by these means, even though the calamity had happened, he might shame his Maker by his gratitude into putting back the hands of time, and so restoring the murdered man to life. At last by the constant reiteration of the thing which he desired, he began to take it for granted that his prayer was answered. Spurling was not dead; he was alive, and he was going to ask his forgiveness for the evil which he had thought against him.

He put together the words which he would say to him when they met, and the gestures he would use to make his words convincing. He repeated them over many times that he might retain them in his memory. Then something would happen to take his attention away, one of the dogs would be shirking or the sled would have overturned, and, when he came back to the words which he had planned, he would be thrown into a frenzy, finding that they had slipped his mind.

Though he was desperately in earnest over this game at which he played, he was aware all the while of its unreality—that it was but a game. His sanity warned him that what he had seen had truly happened, and that the man was dead. This was not the first occasion upon which he had seen a mirage when the snow was down and the land was white. There had been times before, when, at the moment of daybreak or sunset, he had witnessed strange freaks of inverted forest and river hovering in the sky. Once he had seen an Indian ten miles away, attacking a wolf which had been caught by the leg in a steel trap, belonging to another man. So distinctly had he seen his features and dress that, at a later day, when he had brought in his winter catch of furs to exchange, he had recognised him; and when he had offered him the wolf-skin, had accused him of the theft. Moreover, he knew that, whether the sight which he had witnessed was mirage or fancy, he did not deserve the leniency for which he prayed. He had had his chance and warning three times already: once in the Klondike; once after the arrival of Spurling, when God wrote upon the ice; and once at the bend, when in the company of PÈre Antoine he had mistaken the body of Strangeways for that of Spurling.

Then there was the appearance of the murderer to be accounted for, and his motive in slaying. He had been smaller in stature than himself, as had been the creature at the Shallows, but he had had the same peculiarities of clothing and was very much alike. Yet he strove to drive down all his doubts and to believe the thing which he desired—that the phenomenon was the result of imagination, and that Spurling was not dead.

He made small progress in his travelling, for his body was worn out by previous hardships. Sometimes he took over two hours to go three miles; it was long past midnight when Dead Rat Portage came in sight.

At this point the river made a large curve to the southward and broadened out into rapids; the portage was eight hundred yards in length and saved voyageurs six miles, crossing the neck of land by a narrow trail and picking up the Last Chance River on the other side. In summer time the York boats were unloaded here, and dragged across on rollers, the freight being carried on men's backs. As he drew near, his hope sank; the place looked so gloomy and forbidding. There were stories told about it and of how it had won its name, which might well make any man afraid. An old fort, established by the French at the time when they disputed the possession of Keewatin with Prince Rupert's Company, had once stood there; it was said that some of the crosses which fringed the trail marked spots where its defenders lay buried. However, it was not the memory of the past, but the knowledge of what might now await him, which caused him to hesitate.

On the river's bank, where the portage commenced, was a cleared space, from which a path led round the cabin and tunnelled into the forest. As he eased his sled out of the river-bed, he caught the smell of burning, and, when he had topped the bank, he saw the glow of an almost extinguished fire. The overhanging trees, casting their network of shadows across the snow, prevented him from distinguishing at that distance any object that lay beneath them. While he halted, half inclined to wait till daybreak before proceeding further with his investigation, he was startled by the sound of footsteps. They came toward him very cautiously and there were many of them. He saw the glint of eyes in the darkness, shining out and disappearing among the crosses. He tried to count them; as far as he could make out there were six pairs. Then he called them softly by name, and there came toward him Spurling's four grey huskies and the two of his own team, which had been taken.

And still he clung desperately to his hope and would not allow himself to believe that in the shadow of the trees, a dozen yards from where he was standing, the man whom he had set out to kill was lying murdered. He whispered his name, not daring to speak louder. When no answer was returned, he rallied his retreating faith by saying, "He is sleeping. I must approach him gently. If he awakes and hears me, he may think I am his enemy and escape me."

Leaving his dogs, he stole toward the sparks of fire. Although he still denied the mirage, telling himself that what he had seen was fancied, he directed his steps by that which he had witnessed in the sky.

Drawing nearer, he made out the smouldering log; cowardice prompted him to procrastinate, he crept round behind it. The air was heavy with the smell of scorching leather. His eyes growing more accustomed to the shadow, he saw the figure of a man, lying on the snow with his arms stretched out in the shape of a cross and his moccasined feet protruding above the glowing ashes. The last vestige of hope left him; he knew that Spurling was dead. With certainty, his power of decision returned; he still had a purpose to live for—to avenge this death.

Having pulled the body aside and heaped branches against the log, he rekindled the fire. In the light which it cast he could see the blurred trail of Spurling, where he had crawled to and from the cabin; also he could see the tracks which the slayer's snowshoes had left as he strode away through the forest following the portage. He stooped and examined them. By so doing he learnt a new fact—that the man who had done the deed was of Indian blood, for the toes of his footprints inclined to turn inwards, and in carrying his feet forward he had kept them closer together than does a white man; also he judged that he was lightly built, for the snow beneath his steps was not much crushed.

So Beorn was not the culprit, nor was his phantom-self from the Klondike. He thought of Eyelids; but Eyelids was a tall man and his stride ought to have been longer. That which he had witnessed in the mirage led him to believe that the act had been premeditated, and therefore had some strong motive; either it had been done for the reward or for the sake of theft.

He looked round for Spurling's sled and found it in the cabin; it was still loaded—the gold had not been touched. He was puzzled. If theft was not the object, why had the body been left? Without its production or some part of it that was recognisable, the thousand dollars would not be awarded. The best way to solve the mystery was to follow up the murderer; and, if he were to do that, there was no time to lose.

Dragging the remains into the cabin, he made fast the door, that the wolves might not destroy them; he would care for them on his homeward journey—if he survived to come back. Harnessing the four grey huskies into his sled, since they were the freshest, he set out across the portage. Turning his head, as he entered the forest, he took one last look at the deserted camp. The fire, burning brightly, with no one to sit by it, added the final touch to the general aspect of melancholy. Wailing through the darkness the huskies wandered; and in the background, when the flames shot up, appeared the crosses, bending one toward another, which marked the sleeping-places of men who, years since, had lived and suffered, and obtained their rest.

Beneath the trees, the gloom was so heavy that he could see nothing; but on coming out on to the banks of the river on the other side he again picked up the murderer's trail. It led up the Last Chance in a south-westerly direction towards God's Voice, which was only ten miles distant. He had begun to take it for granted that the man was a Hudson Bay employee, hurrying toward the fort to claim the reward, when the tracks, branching off to the left, climbed out of the river and plunged into a low-lying, thickly wooded wilderness, striking due south.

In Keewatin the rivers are the only highways; to leave them even in summer time, if you have no guide and are not a man born in the district, is extremely dangerous; to do so in winter when, after every precaution has been taken, travel remains precarious, is to court almost certain death. For a moment Granger hesitated. He examined the prints of the snowshoes and saw that they were very recent. The man must have waited somewhere, and seen him coming. He must know now that he was being followed, and could not be far ahead. "Well, it's death whatever happens," thought Granger; "to go on to God's Voice is death; to return to Murder Point is death. I'd just as soon die by this man's hand, trying to avenge Spurling, as one cold morning in Winnipeg with a rope about my neck."

The day rose late and cloudy. The sun did not show itself. The sky weighed down upon the tree-tops, as if too heavy to support itself. Presently large flakes of snow, the size of feathers, drifted through the air, making a gentle rustling as they fell. Granger pressed on more hurriedly, for he feared that, if he dropped too far behind, the snow would cover up all traces of the man, and so he would escape him. Sometimes he fancied that he could hear him going on ahead, for every now and then a twig would snap. In the heat of his pursuit he took no account of direction.

About midday he halted; of late all sounds had grown rarer and the snow had thickened, causing even his own footprints to appear blurred a few seconds after they had been made. Of the trail which he followed he could see nothing himself, trusting to his huskies' sense of smell to lead him aright.

Soon he grew strangely nervous, for he thought that he heard the crunch of snowshoes coming up behind. He persuaded himself that it was imagination, until his dogs, swinging round in a half-circle, began to travel back in a direction parallel to the route they had already traversed. He paused and listened again; behind him he could distinctly hear the sound of something stirring. Then he knew that he was no longer the pursuer.

His blood froze in his veins, and he began to lose confidence. He realised that if the murderer knew the district and was moving in a circle purposely, he was doing so in order that he might lure him to his death. Abandoning all thought of pursuit, his sole endeavour became to regain the river-bed. He lashed his dogs, urging them forward to the limit of their strength; but he came to nothing that was familiar; and, when he paused for breath, he could always hear the snowshoes following.

Then he awoke to the knowledge that he was lost. His first sensation was of blank bewilderment, producing in him an utter loss of memory. He strove to quiet himself, but his will-power refused to operate. Who he was, and why he was there, he could not remember; of two things only was he conscious, that he was pursued by something that was evil, and that he was lost.

A state of chaos reigned within him, which was soon succeeded by an all-pervading terror. He must escape somehow to safety, to a place where there were men. He longed to dash on somewhere, on and on; but he was paralysed by his utter inability to think consecutively or to choose out any particular direction. He began to see horrible contorted shapes about him, and to imagine modes of death which were still more horrible. He might die of starvation, he might die of thirst, he might die of frost; but his worst fear was of something which he would never see, which would steal softly up, when he was too cold to turn his head, and strike him from behind. He circled round and round to avoid the blow; but he felt that, as he moved, the thing moved keeping pace with him, so that, for all his alertness, it was always behind his back.

In a way in which he had never desired it before, he longed for human companionship—just to look once more upon a living face. And to all these fears and yearnings there was the undertow of an added horror—the terror lest he should become insane. He burst into a passion of weeping; as the tears fell they froze upon his face. The air was thick with snow which the rising wind drifted about, driving it into curious and fantastic shapes. Had he been more quiet, he would have known that his only wise plan was to lie down until the blizzard was past. It would bury him, but as a covering it would act as a blanket to keep him warm. The blizzard seemed to him to be hemming him in, building up about him a shifting wall through which the pursuer could attack him unseen.

Always he was conscious of the pursuer's presence; always he could see the picture of Spurling's uplifted face and the pleading that was in his eyes as the assailant, with his back turned towards the onlooker, poised the axe above his head. That he might not share that fate he broke away into the greyness, tripping over snow ridges, falling into drifts, and bruising his body against the trunks of trees in the madness of his flight. His huskies added to his panic by following him.

There were times when he ran so far ahead that he could neither see nor hear them; but, when he halted, panting, they would emerge and lay themselves down at his side. He hated them; they were sinister in his eyes. Had they not brought Spurling from Winnipeg, and had not their yellow-faced leader been the cause of Strangeways' death?

The wind, rising higher, shrieked among the branches. He wandered on, neither knowing nor caring where he went, for he had lost all sense of locality or time. There were intervals during which he must have dreamed and slept, for he passed down an endless street of tall houses, built in the English fashion, and the blinds were up and it was nightfall. On the windows danced the light of fires, burning on the hearths inside; and sometimes he could see the faces of children looking out at him. He held up his blue hands at them, making signs that they should let him in that he might warm himself; but they shook their heads mischievously, and ran away and laughed.

After one of these experiences, more real to him than the others, he came to himself. Surely that was the sound of music and dancing that came to him above the cry of the storm. He waited for a lull and listened, then followed the direction of the sound. As he drew nearer, he caught the thud of moccasined feet beating time upon a boarded floor, and snatches of the tune which the violin was playing. Something loomed up out of the darkness to meet him. He held out his hands to force it from him, and drove them against a door. Then he knew that he had arrived at God's Voice.

He was half inclined to knock; at least they would not threaten him and drive him away this time as they had done in the previous winter. What was more likely to happen was that the man who opened to him, recognising him, would seize him by the throat, drag him inside and quickly slam the door. He would push him before him across the square till he came to the room where the trappers were dancing, where, in all probability, the factor was. And Robert Pilgrim when he saw him, wagging his red beard at him, would shout, "Ha, so you heard me whistle, and have come like a dog!"

He drew himself upright and stepped back from the gateway. No, he could not endure that. Any death was preferable to the price that he would have to pay for such shelter.

He worked his way along the wall till he stood beneath the window where the fort was assembled. It was a comfort to him to hear again the sound of voices. He listened to the fiddling and recognised it as that of Sandy McQuean, the half-breed son of a famous Orkney man. He had learnt his art from his father. They were all Scotch airs that he played. He could sing, when he chose, with a Highland accent, and had caught the knack of imbuing what he sang with an intolerable pathos.

The stamping of feet had ceased, but the violinist wandered on. Presently a new melody began to emerge from the improvisations, and a man's voice rose above the storm. The words he sang were The Flowers o' the Forest:

Granger shifted his feet uneasily as he listened, and half-turned to go.

As he did so, he found that someone was standing close behind him. He did not see his face, but one glance was enough to warn him. He dodged and ran to the river. The man was following him again. He took the direction which was open to him, and set out down-stream, returning to the portage.

The wind was dead against him, blinding his eyes and choking him with snow. He bowed his head and struggled on. He made a brave effort, but he knew that he was slowly freezing. His flesh was icy and his bones seemed heavy, weighing him down. The blood halted, and leapt forward, and halted in his veins and arteries, as though there were frequent stoppages past which it had to squeeze its way; he could hear it surging.

Gradually his physical pain grew less and, as it did so, his mind attained an unwonted clearness. He had somewhat the same experience as is said to come to drowning men in their last moments of consciousness. He was able to review his life as a whole and justly, attributing to each separate action its proper importance, and share of praise or blame. He realised that his hiding from Robert Pilgrim on Huskies' Island, journey to the Forbidden River, and pursuit of Spurling, had been one long series of mistakes, each one tending to make him appear more guilty of Strangeways' death. He owned that all his life had been spent in avoiding his most obvious duties, and in setting himself hard tasks in exchange, which were impossible of accomplishment. His first duty had been towards his mother, and he had abandoned it nominally for the sake of a childish pledge, really for the glamour of El Dorado. His more recent duty had been to fulfil his obligations to his half-breed wife, especially now that she was about to bear him a child; he had forsaken her for his old dream's sake and for the sake of a revenge which he had persuaded himself was noble.

Reviewing these facts, he promised himself that, if ever he were given again the power of choice, he would return to Murder Point and live for her. Another matter became clear in his mind; that, when Spurling's body was discovered, if the man who had done the deed did not own up, he would be accused of the murder—and it would be murder, for it would be thought that he had killed him not in the cause of justice, but out of private spite. Morally he knew that he was the culprit and deserved to be hanged, for he had only avoided being guilty through the accident of having been forestalled in his crime.

He stumbled and fell full length in a drift. He did not try to rise. He had no fear of dying; his only desire was to get warm now. He pressed nearer to the snow and closed his eyes, and gradually lost consciousness.

He was awakened by someone rubbing his face vigorously. He resented the interference; he wanted the rest. Once he opened his eyes, and was blinded by a roaring fire. As the warmth spread through him and his circulation returned, his body became very painful, as though it were being pierced by millions of red-hot needles. The agony of it brought him to himself.

A man was bending over him, whose face he could not see, for the hood was fastened before it, leaving only his eyes visible. By his dress he knew that he was his pursuer and Spurling's slayer. Again he was impressed with the fancy, not so much by his proportions which were smaller, but by his clothing, that he was very like himself. Languidly he awaited an opportunity to get another glimpse of his eyes; somehow they were familiar, he knew them. Then, because the man, murderer though he was, was saving his life, he turned away his head. He would not see anything which, in a weaker moment, might tempt him to give information in order that he might save himself.

The man, seeing that he was recovered and safe to be left, without a word of explanation glided off into the darkness.

Granger sat up and looked after him; he was puzzled by the memory of those eyes. He ran through all the list of his acquaintance, and could not place them. The blizzard had now subsided, and the stars shone overhead. He must have lain unconscious for some time before being found. All around him, and as far as eye could reach, the snow lay in short choppy waves, which took on the appearance of motion by reason of the shadows. As he watched, something lifted up its head above a ridge, and he saw that it was one of the huskies. Either his team had followed him, or the man had brought them with him. Rising to his feet, on the other side of the fire he saw his sled. He felt hungry, and going towards it was about to get out some provisions, when he found that that was unnecessary; in the ashes a can of black tea was brewing and some bacon had been left, also a bundle of wood sufficient to last him till morning. He spent the remainder of the night there, and at daybreak continued his journey to the portage.

When he reached the cabin and pushed open the door, he found that it was occupied. An Indian, of the Sucker tribe, whom he had previously met, was sitting there. Looking round he saw that Spurling's body was in the same place and untouched, but that the load upon the sled had been rifled.

When he had offered him some tobacco, the Indian, jerking his head in the direction of the body, asked, "You kill him?"

Granger signed denial. The Indian looked doubtful. Then he said, pointing to the old tracks in the cabin which his snowshoes had left, "All the same, those your tracks."

Granger was in no mood for arguing, so he nodded assent. The Indian was silent for a while. Presently he rose to his feet and harnessed in his team. As he passed out of the door, he said, "You bad man. All the same, you kill him."

Granger followed him out and saw him crossing the portage towards God's Voice. He scraped a hole in the snow and buried Spurling.

On turning his attention to the sled, he saw that the Indian had taken everything except the gold. He poured out the dust and nuggets above Spurling's grave; it was the thing which he had loved most in life, as some men love goodness and flowers. To both Spurling and himself it was worthless now; but it was the only offering which he had.

Leaving the mound sparkling white and yellow in the sunshine, he struck the trail down the Last Chance River, returning to Murder Point.